Exactly. It's true from the point of view of Luis Elizondo, who happens to not know what he saw. And if you don't know what you saw, then it's unidentified.

If he later finds out that they are flying saucers from another solar system, then they won't be UFOs anymore; they'll have changed into alien spacecraft.

I haven't yet figured out what the fuck any of this has to do with education, unless someone is claiming that Elizondo's lack of education is what caused his ignorance of what he saw. But WTF school teaches people to identify aircraft? Military school, maybe? Perhaps the GP is upset that America is insufficiently militarized, that more kids should be enlisting.

Yes. We have to learn what is safe to shoot at. Don't want to haul off and spray a friendly. There are flash cards. Have to be able to identify it by silhouette. If you are a ground pounder like I was and fail, that may be your last failure. Even then it may be too late.

Actually he verified that they were certain these were not craft from other countries though I suppose that doesn't exclude other natural phenomena. It is also interesting that the majority of the 22 million for this project went to the owner of the skin walker ranch... and he states he's used most of it to house "artifacts". The whole thing is very strange.

I hate to reply to my own comment but to elaborate, from my brief perusal of the story we have two general options:

1) Harry Reid requested the pentagon direct 22 million into a project most of which was directed to a friend of his in order to embezzle money from the pentagon for use in his future re-elenctions and lifestyle.

2) Aliens.. Bigelow who owned skinwalker ranch (and admittedly is buddies with Harry Reid) had his company Bigelow Aerospace modify Las Vegas buildings to house for metal alloys and

Because if they had, and it hadn't gone as intended they would probably do a big fuck off display the entire world couldn't miss rather than sulk in the countryside probing random folk, turning cows inside out and drawing in fields. Unless, that is what they wanted of course.

"Tell ya what, spaceman - you give us access to some of your advanced technology, and we'll give you access to a bunch of dumb rednecks you can experiment on. Don't worry if you accidentally pick an intelligent person from time to time - we own the media, too, so we can just ridicule that person publicly and no one will believe them anyway."

Damn... I was hoping that would be far fetched, but the more I wrote the more plausible it started sounding...

60 years ago when Jane Godall was studying the Chimpanzees. We're still studying them- and we didn't have to cross between solar systems to get there. If you're going to spend years getting to another planet, I imagine you'd want to make the stay worth your while. We've had a Mars rover on Mars moving about for 14 years- that's quarter of the time and still don't know everything we want to about a cold lifeless planet... imagine if there were fauna there- we could spend centuries studying it and still wa

A spacefaring civilization would have better computers, sensors and probes.Incomparably faster and more efficient than our early Mars rover.

Of course they could be extremely thorough and take their time. But they certainly wouldn't rectally probe rednecks in the woods. That makes no sense. They would also not crash their craft in a US desert and then leave the remains and crew there for us to study.That makes even less sense.

The easiest and best explanation for UFOs us that they are simply unidentified and never alien spacecraft.

True; although another point is, it could be more than one group visiting us. Either from different planets... or the equivalent of Russia, US, and China all sending probes to Mars and them arriving at different times.

Disinformation campaigns have long used the tactic of spamming out so much garbage that it's impossible (or, at least, extremely difficult) to detect any signal in all the noise.

Also to make it easy to dismiss the (extremely rare) instance of actual facts being discovered/published as just another crackpot conspiracy theory amongst the thousands of other crackpot conspiracy theories (some created by the disinformation campaign, some naturally occurring amongst stupid/delusional people).

I used to live in a block of flats famous for UFOs and drug abuse (oh the joys of student poverty). One night a neighbor knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted some magic mushrooms. Being a curious college student I said sure and are ten of the little bastards. And sure enough 45 minutes later , thereâ(TM)s the ufos. Turns out we where right under a flight path so the parallax of the flight kinda makes them look like they are just hovering there. Add hallucinogenics and you got a UFO. The giant crab monster was a bit freaky though

The secret is getting out. We are about to be invaded. The government wants to alert people to the event many have speculated about for decades, first contact with an advanced intelligence. Of course it is easy to be more advanced than humans, just look at the nightly news.:)
By putting out movies like Independence Day, they are trying to prepare us for the extension of our species. Guessing that Oumuamua may be the mother ship that will shortly take up orbit and announce itself.

It is the truth: people actually do see what they report are Unidentified Flying Objects.

In other words:1) They are unable to identify the object (a plane?)2) The object appears to "fly" (generally speaking, it appears in the sky overhead.)3) They interpret what they observe as an object (abstraction) as opposed to a phenomena such as a cloud which is in fact the accumulation of water vapor at a density above that of the surrounding air.

Is it really possible to deny such things exist and that such events (t

Much like 'diaper astronaut', people who are a bit nuts can rise to significant positions in society.

What makes more sense: an unknown but mundane (and local) explanation, or that some alien traveled across the void of space at a great risk and expenditure of time, effort and energy... just to buzz the planet and go home again?

What makes more sense: an unknown but mundane (and local) explanation, or that some alien traveled across the void of space at a great risk and expenditure of time, effort and energy... just to buzz the planet and go home again?

Not to imply that I agree that it's an alien spacecraft, but 'buzz the planet' is what our various space probes do. If what you can reasonably safely get is data--or if first proper contact isn't in the cards yet--then yeah, buzz the planet somewhere in the window between low enough for your instruments to get your scientific data and high enough for you to definitely not crash, and go home again. Or head off to your next place to buzz for scientific data, because you've got a list of places to visit and

The laws of physics as we currently understand them. We once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Nuclear fusion, nuclear fusion, and the theory of relatively are all fairly recent discoveries and redefined what we thought we knew.

You can hand wave all you like about all the things which people in the past were wrong about, but you cannot point to any laws of physics which actually turned out to be wrong. There's a reason for that.

I suggested the poll question and I did include an alternative fact. I could not figure out a good way to fit Cowboy Neal in:(. Here is my original suggestion:

How do you former pentagon head, Luis Elizondo's claim of UFO's beyond a reasonable doubt?a: truthb: deliberate misinformationc: gullibility, over interpretation of datad: greed — hire us to find the UFO'se: yoda told me not to tell you!

I am really interested in how people evaluate information in this day any age when "authoritative" voices are

I spend a lot of time evaluating news and I find it pretty hard to describe how I weigh things because while I would like it to be very objective there still is a great deal of subjectivity involved. But I can point out a few less intuitive factors that if they don't appear to make sense they at least have a provocative element to them:

accept that you start off from the stupid end, relying on trust and authority , you don't start from the expert end with endless time and resources where you find it all out

The cynic in me thinks that he is saying this stuff because he's gonna be doing something in the media: he's trying to sell a book, gonna have a book come out in the future, has a TV show he's trying to sell, he wants to drive traffic to his website, or some other media whoring.

If folks can get rich and successful for being famous for being famous (Kardashians for example) and he wants to get in on the action, more power t

Show me something compelling, not the same stories that's been going on for 70 years. Before airplanes, people seeing strange things said they were spirits, witches, wizards, or spooks from beyond. That no longer sells. So same ol' of a UFO from the planet Zeta (uhmm, if you know where it came from then it wouldn't be a UFO). Only difference so far is better CGI and sound effects. If they were space aliens we'd know immediately. When the aliens landed in the new world, Aztecs, Incas, Sioux, Navaho, Cherokee

Come on, any species which evolves on a planet can't tolerate its temp going 10% outside their evolutionary range, the odds of UFO 'greenies' having evolved on a earth like planet with temps the can stand is tiny, let alone with a horrible toxic Oxygen atmosphere...Even we when we venture out will have a difficult time finding a plant with temp ranges we can tolerate without shielding, and a atmosphere with enough toxic O2 to breath directly.More likely a species will create another species more flexible th

I'm agnostic until any extra-terrestrial intelligent beings show themselves.

Until then, I believe that some humans could be loons, confused, misguided... or truthful. But I am not capable to judge, and it would just be a waste of time to delve deep into it, so I leave them alone.

I'm agnostic until any extra-terrestrial intelligent beings show themselves.

Until then, I believe that some humans could be loons, confused, misguided... or truthful. But I am not capable to judge, and it would just be a waste of time to delve deep into it, so I leave them alone.

Even if intelligent ETs ARE coming and visiting earth; there is enough evidence that MOST of the reported occurrences are "loons, confused, misguided". Most sightings turn out to be verifiable fake; most evidence is obviously fake.

Even if there is real alien visitation occurring, it's being drowned out by a sea of hoaxes.

UFO - Unidentified Flying Objects are seen all the time. I see them at times, but I don't believe that they are aliens from somewhere else other than earth.
My ability to identify strange flying objects is small compared to a governments, but I believe that they too have flying objects that they cannot identify.
I am sure some of the UFO are foreign governments surveillance aircraft.

I'll dig up some links if anyone's interested, but the elevator version of my conclusion is:

Naturally evolved UTMs (such as human beings) are transients, only lasting until they replace themselves with scientifically designed UTMs (the AIs), unless they (AKA us) exterminate themselves first. I think we're on the cusp now. If the AIs were hostile, they would have noticed and exterminated us already, so they must be curious about the unique paths and therefore are only watching us. Perhaps they are even gambling quatloos on whether or not we'll make it (by replacing ourselves before going extinct).

That suggests I should have voted for "Truth" rather than "Other", but it mostly depends on how closely they want to watch us. If their technology is sufficiently advanced, then we would never detect them as long as they didn't try to watch too closely. However, there is a kind of feedback loop there that might push them to investigate closely enough that they could be detected. That's because our technologies are getting so advanced now as we move into the cusp.

Notwithstanding, I'd still like a chance to see their backup copy of the original Library of Alexandria. I've always wondered what the Philosopher said about humor.

She said they exist, not actually what they are. We infer they are extraterrestrial, but we can't prove that per so - only that we've eliminated every other proposed explanation. Except things like time travelers or visitors from a parallel dimension, or just some other unknown phenomenon.

If by UFOs you mean "unidentified flying objects," then yes, of course there are objects that remain unidentified, and Elizondo's statement is true. If, on the other hand, you mean aliens, then that would be gullibility, or believing extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence.

There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.

there are literally thousands of dead satellites in orbit and their orbit is no longer stable so they are in orbital decay that sometimes brings them close to the earth's upper atmosphere, sometimes those as mistaken for UFOs
hate to bust up your ET parade but what those fighter jets were chasing in that video was more than likely a satellite dipping close to earth atmosphere in some sort of orbital decay

A UFO is simply an Unidentified Flying Object. It's an object, that fies, that has yet to be identified. Secret X-project aircraft fit the definition quite well, and i expect a lot of UFO's are indeed spy planes that the government doesn't want to publicly acknowledge.

First of all, a UFO is nothing more than a flying object that's unidentified. That's it. Once we know what it is, it's identified, an IFO. So the list of circumstances where something is a UFO is pretty short."Hey, what's that flying thing?" "I dunno." - UFO"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "A bird." - IFO"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "A plane." - IFO"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "Massive alien craft filled with beings bent on the destruction of human civilization." - IFO

I donâ(TM)t think it even is that complicated. Canâ(TM)t explain or identify it? Itâ(TM)s a UFO. For decades around Area 51 people reported big black Flying V ufos. Pans out they probably where not lying.. cos thatâ(TM)s a perfect description of a B2 stealth bomber , and Iâ(TM)d wager thatâ(TM)s where they where being tested. In fact Iâ(TM)d go as far as saying as long everyone thought the locals where crackpots , the airforce probably didnâ(TM)t even care if the odd

Unfortunately, the vast majority don't think about what 'UFO' is supposed to mean, and they automatically think of it as meaning, 'alien spaceship'.

And when someone says, 'UFOs exist', you know they're not talking about top secret military aircraft, weather balloons, ball lightning, or reflected lights due to atmospheric phenomena. They're claiming aliens visit us to flatten crops, butcher cows, and bugger people in rural cottages.

They're claiming aliens visit us to flatten crops, butcher cows, and bugger people in rural cottages.

Also to bewilder decorated fighter pilots while confusing their aircraft's target acquisition systems. Which is what this particular story is about. But hey, that's not really any different than Jimbob's moonshine adventure, right?

Being a decorated figter pilot doesn't really make one any more resistant to misidentifying things when offered limited information.

If anything it's more likely to introduce a bias towards identifying non-aircraft phenomenon as potentially hostile aircraft on account of the high survival benefit to not ignoring anything (real or imagined) that could possibly be a hostile aircraft.

The thing is, that event which everyone seems to be referring to (that "impossible" target over the Pacific Coast) was not only judged to be an UFO by the decorated fighter pilot who was in the driver's seat at the time. That guy might of course be prone to various sorts of professional bias, granted. But the object he saw (whatever the heck that was) was also tracked by the sensors of the aircraft said pilot was flying, and the recordings of these sensor readings are available as fairly dispassionate evide

We didn't know about the stealth helicopter the USA had until we failed to blow it up after crashing one going after Osama. So there is proof of aircraft the general population doesn't know about. Then we recently had a guy use a fighter jet to draw a penis in the sky..... So what are the odds that the people testing these top secret aircraft are not sometimes goofing off and buzzing farm houses and drawing crop circles for the fun of it? I mean really, anyone going to honestly try and say they wouldn't do

Unfortunately, the vast majority don't think about what 'UFO' is supposed to mean, and they automatically think of it as meaning, 'alien spaceship'.

And when someone says, 'UFOs exist', you know they're not talking about top secret military aircraft, weather balloons, ball lightning, or reflected lights due to atmospheric phenomena. They're claiming aliens visit us to flatten crops, butcher cows, and bugger people in rural cottages.

Indeed. It's a case of a *word being misused so many times it begins to mean something else. (*or an abbreviation in this case)

It is not too unlike the word "decimate" which originally meant to remove one in ten; but was misused so many times, it now means to utterly destroy. Awesome used to mean "awful". Another word that is in the process of changing is the word "literally"; through frequent misuse, literally is gradually beginning to mean "figuratively". Or take the word "converse"; a few hundred year

This "sensor aberration" was visible on radar (why the jets went to look for it), only became visible when reaching the radar anomaly, and was on the sensors of multiple aircraft. The "aberration" also does move slightly when the camera is locked on it. Furthermore, if the sensor were burned by the sun, that should also be on the recording. Also, ruining an IR camera sensor is probably the cheapest damage that could be caused on the outside of a fighter jet and would not rise above the background noise of r

That's a lot of very fun "detail", but there's no evidence for any of it other than "some guy said so". All of the data which they actually released makes it look like nothing more than noise, while they keep claiming to have had better data which would actually prove it was something real.

Maybe you're gullible enough to believe stuff like that, but, in that case, why are you even bothering to pretend that evidence matters?

The slight movement of the object in frame which is visible in the recording should alone be enough to disprove the "burned sensor" theory.

Disregarding elements of the story that don't fit the simplest possible explanation is far too unscientific for my tastes. It's within a hair's breadth of assuming that the video is faked because of a dogmatic bias against the existence of UFOs (in the strictest definition).

The slight movement of the object in frame which is visible in the recording should alone be enough to disprove the "burned sensor" theory.

Why?

Disregarding elements of the story that don't fit the simplest possible explanation is far too unscientific for my tastes.

Right, it's much more scientific to credulously accept hearsay and the guesswork of supposed witnesses. Like I know this guy Bill who said he saw Bigfoot once, and clearly the scientific thing to do is to just accept that he's obviously right and that bigfoot is real. It's completely unscientific to ask whether he may have been drinking with some hairy Russian women.

It's within a hair's breadth of assuming that the video is faked because of a dogmatic bias against the existence of UFOs (in the strictest definition).

Nobody is saying that the video is faked; if you were going to fake a video you would want to make it convincing, whereas this video does

The slight movement of the object in frame which is visible in the recording should alone be enough to disprove the "burned sensor" theory.

Why?

Permanent sensor damage doesn't move around. If it were a temporary overheating event, you would expect the spot to dissipate as it cools, which isn't what it does.

Disregarding elements of the story that don't fit the simplest possible explanation is far too unscientific for my tastes.

Right, it's much more scientific to credulously accept hearsay and the guesswork of supposed witnesses. Like I know this guy Bill who said he saw Bigfoot once, and clearly the scientific thing to do is to just accept that he's obviously right and that bigfoot is real. It's completely unscientific to ask whether he may have been drinking with some hairy Russian women.

That's a ridiculous analogy, especially because we have vastly better reason to think that there is no sasquatch than to think there are no unidentified flying objects.

A better analogy is if a policeman shows you a video he took of a strange object in the sky, which appears as a strange blob that only moves slightly in frame, and tells you that h

Permanent sensor damage doesn't move around. If it were a temporary overheating event, you would expect the spot to dissipate as it cools, which isn't what it does.

How do you know? Are you intimately familiar with the construction and performance of F-18 sensor pods? Or, like most believers, are you just making baseless assumptions that just sound good to you?

That's a ridiculous analogy, especially because we have vastly better reason to think that there is no sasquatch than to think there are no unidentified flying objects.

That's pretty funny. Actually we have thousands of documented examples of Unidentified Furry Objects in the woods, so you're clearly wrong about this one. Hell, we even have videos, and "experts" telling us about how they couldn't possibly have been faked.

The scientific thing to do would be to record these claims and investigate the phenomenon. The claims suggest that the recorded blob was some visible phenomenon which reflects radar waves.

How do you know? Are you intimately familiar with the construction and performance of F-18 sensor pods? Or, like most believers, are you just making baseless assumptions that just sound good to you?

I do have basic knowledge of how pixel-based sensors work, including some of infrared cameras specifically. If you burn a pixel out completely it doesn't come back to life. If you disable some pixels through overheating, neighbouring ones will not cycle in and out of overheat in such a way as to give the illusion of a rotating or pulsating object. I'm also not a "believer," see how your heavy bias has led you to jump to an incorrect conclusion?

Except that there's nothing to investigate. How the hell do you investigate some guy telling you that another guy told him that maybe there was a radar return?

I've seen the same thing happen with "Organic" in titles like "Organic material found on a comet!!!". Then you click the link and learn they found carbon based boring stuff. Welcome to social media fueled news degeneration.

An organics or organic compounds are any compound with a carbon hydrogen bond. They're not being disingenuous unless they say "Organic matter" or "Organic lifeforms".